Kotaku East

How To Use Chopsticks

Often foreigners in Japan are complimented on how they use chopsticks. Many, however, are not actually using them properly. Then again, neither are most Japanese people. Go figure. As Kotaku reported in 2012, only 30 percent of Japanese people in their 40s and 50s hold chopsticks correctly. Each year, that number gets smaller and smaller.…

Incredible Cardboard Creations From Japan

Monami Ohno is a Japanese cardboard artist. Kotaku has previously featured her work, and since then, she’s continued to churn out amazing creations. Her work continues to show an amazing attention to detail, while some are larger in scale. This Mechagodzilla is nuts. See? Incredible! So is this DeLorean. Ohno studied art at university, and…

Tips for Drawing Backgrounds

Thomas Romain is a terrific artist working in the anime industry in Tokyo. Previously, he showed how to draw detailed buildings. This time, we’re going to learn from him how to draw backgrounds. Romain has an impressive resume, including art direction on Symphogear and mecha design for Space Dandy. Over numerous months, he’s been kind…

This YouTuber Can Probably Eat More Than You 

This is Yuka Kinoshita. And today, we are going watch her eat so much fucking food. In Japanese, Kinoshita is called a “gluttonous beautiful woman” (大食い美女 or “oogui bijyo”). Her YouTube channel is popular and featuresvideos of her doing things like eating one hundred Chicken McNuggets: Which is a snap for her. For her, this…

Turning Real People into Anime Art

Real life looks different from anime and manga. That’s okay! But here’s what three dimensional humans might look like if they were two-dimensional drawings. This is called “nijigenka” (二次元化) or “2D-ification” in Japanese. It’s not only popular in Japan, but pretty much anywhere people are interested in anime and manga. Some 2D-ified images created by…

How Manga Characters Change and Evolve

Previously, Kotaku published an explainer on how anime art has changed in Japan over the decades. Now, let’s have a look at how some manga characters have evolved. It’s only natural for characters to evolve, and it happens any and everywhere. Heck, just compare Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse. What is interesting is to see…

If Dragon Ball Super Was Made in the 1990s

It’s not. It’s made now, but if Dragon Ball Super was made in the 1990s, the show would probably look something like this. On Deviant Art, the incredibly talented Salvador Vera Llanos has uploaded some images of Dragon Ball Super done up in a Dragon Ball Z art style. The results look fantastic. But first,…

Frequently Asked Questions about Visiting Japan

So, you’re going to Japan, huh? Fantastic. You might have some questions. Hopefully, I’ll have some answers. Back in 2001, I visited Japan for the first time. I liked the country so much, I ended up staying. Permanently. Over the years, I have gotten numbers emails from Kotaku readers, asking me a variety of questions.…

How To Make Pokémon Coloring Books Horrifying

If you want to make Pocket Monster coloring books scary, don’t just color between the lines. Draw stuff between them. These wonderful doodles were done by Twitter user Bankokukun. They are brilliant nightmare fuel. We have seen this kind of thing before. It was frightening then, and it’s frightening now. For more of Bankokukun’s art,…

An Inside Look At How Anime Is Made 

Ever wonder how anime is made? This is a window into how animation studio Kyoto Animation produces its work. Here, the anime is Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions. Via Naver and Oeker, the screenshots below were taken from the anime’s Blu-ray release and show the process. You can see the rough animation being drawn, images…

The Most Amazing Things You Can Buy At Tokyo Game Show

Tokyo Game Show is as much about going shopping as it is playing games. Most of the major game publishers have two booths at TGS: One with game demos, and one selling merch. Some of it’s available elsewhere in Japan, some of it’s only available here. And most of it is really cool. Above: A…

A Video Tour Of The Tokyo Game Show Floor

Let us take you on a magical tour of the Tokyo Game Show floor! Brian Ashcraft and I show you what’s hot at the Capcom, Sega, Square Enix, and Sony booths, plus more. We discover the secret Secret of Mana area as well as delicious plastic meat. Enjoy!

Here’s the Japanese special edition for Secret of Mana As you can see, it is pretty hot shit. You got your game, your soundtrack, figurines of the three characters, and then a freaking pop-up book with the Mana tree, so you can set the figures next to the tree and recreate the game’s iconic cover…

As you get off the train for Tokyo Game Show, you’re greeted by the main characters of every Final Fantasy. It’s an ad for a 30th anniversary art exhibition starting in January here in Tokyo. I went up and down stairs until I found Terra and Bartz. (Well, Tina and Butz.)

I Played Mario Kart VR And It Was Pretty Okay

Mario Kart Arcade GP VR isn’t a game that you can buy, but a virtual reality installation in Bandai Namco’s VR Zone attraction in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It promises to put you in the driver’s seat for a Mario Kart race, and that it does. It’s pretty fun, but you’re not really missing out on much…

Nintendo Games Used To Be Released On Japanese PCs

Nintendo characters very rarely appear on non-Nintendo hardware, but that wasn’t always the case. For a few years after the release of the original Famicom in 1983, Nintendo licensed its games to Hudson Soft, which produced versions for the major Japanese PC platforms of the day. As of late, many of the game shops in…

The most worthless 3DS game in the world? Probably Monster Hunter 4, which sold a colossal 4 million copies in Japan, more than almost anything else. Now they can’t give them away; witness a whole pile of minty-fresh copies in this 100-yen (about $1) bin outside the store Surugaya in Akihabara today.

I’m in Japan! Tokyo Game Show begins later this week, but I’ll be joining Ashcraft in bringing you news of whatever else I find while exploring Tokyo starting… now. Here is a plate of Hinoya, my current favorite Japanese curry. It is a perfection of the form. I’m trying not to just eat this exclusively…

The Genius Of The Dragon Ball Manga

It’s not just the characters who make Dragon Ball so great. It’s not just the stories that they tell. It’s also the way Akira Toriyama lays out the manga. It’s truly wonderful. Here’s why. Website Nikaidorenji provided a look at how logical the Dragon Ball manga flows. (Dragon Ball is certainly not alone in this…

Making CG Japanese Schoolgirls Is Difficult

This is Saya. According to her co-creator, Yuka Ishikiawa, bringing her to life was not easy. The hurdle, Ishikawa explained via Twitter, is “quite high.” The CG schoolgirl model needs to contain a certain softness as well as the purity of her age. In short, it needs to look like a real person. Mission accomplished,…